How do you find the paths of linked images in Adobe Illustrator 9?

Question

I have an Illustrator file with linked images. I'd actually like to instead embed the images. I first have to know which files they are. How do I find out? I'm using Illustrator 9.

Answer 1

The first Illustrator version I ever used was 10, but, is there a links pallete in version 9? Try the window menu and look for "links". It has a few options there to search for the image you want, relink, open the original, etc.

Answer 2

Great to know the poster is set, but this doesn't answer the question. In CS3, if you double-click on the image in links palette, ti will bring up Link Info for the linked element, which shows the path to the file (provided it isn't longer than the window).

Maybe the older versions allow you to do this too.

Unfortunately, if you're dealing with a missing link element (which you ignored to fix upon opening the file), this field is blank. Illustrator sucks in comparison to InDesign for file packaging and linking. It would be nice if it could package files like InDesign, and store relative references to the external resources.

Answer 3

I use the following perl script to keep track of linked images in Illustrator files. This is especially helpful for broken links, because it will still tell you the full path to the linked image by peeking inside the Illustrator file. It obviously does more than anyone here needs, but perhaps it will be useful. The help should explain how to use it. On my machine I have called it ailinkedfiles.pl and I have put it in ~/bin which is in my PATH.

#!/usr/bin/perl 

# program to find the linked files inside an Adobe Illustrator file
require 5.004;
use File::Basename;   # to extract a filename from a full path
use File::Find;       # to build a list of files
use File::Spec;       # Platform independent way to build paths
use vars qw/ %opt /;  # for command line options - see init()
use strict;


init(); # process command line options

# Autoflush stdout
$|=1;

if ($opt{p}){
 die "Did you really mean to call your script ".$opt{p}."!\n" if($opt{p} =~ /\.ai$/i); 
 print "Generating script file $opt{p}\n" if $opt{v};
 open SCRIPT, "> $opt{p}"; 
}

die "No input specified; use ".basename($0)." -h for help\n" if(@ARGV==0);
my $arg; foreach $arg (@ARGV){
 if(-d $arg){
  # nb it is necesary to convert the directory specification
  # to an absolute path to ensure that the open in &findLinkedFiles
  # works properly during multi directory traversal
  my $InDir=File::Spec->rel2abs($arg); 
  find(\&handleFind,$InDir); 
 } elsif (-f $arg) {
 my $InDir=File::Spec->rel2abs(dirname($ARGV[0])); 
   &findLinkedFiles(File::Spec->rel2abs($ARGV[0]),$InDir) ;
#   &findLinkedFiles(File::Spec->rel2abs($arg)) ;
 }
}

sub init()
# copied from: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~abatko/computers/programming/perl/howto/getopts
{
 use Getopt::Std;      # to handle command line options
 my $opt_string = 'hvlzdsftnp:ux:';
 getopts( "$opt_string", \%opt ) or usage();
 usage() if $opt{h};
}

# Print out usage information
sub usage()
{
 print STDERR << "EOF"; 
Usage: $0 [OPTIONS] <AIFILE/DIR>

Parse an Adobe Illustrator file or (recursively) parse a directory of ai files
and print a list of the linked files to STDOUT.  These could be piped to xargs eg:
$0 aifile.ai | xargs -I {} ln -vs

 -h print this help
 -v verbose ouput
 -s print file names with short path
 -d print current directory on each line
 -n no-print (suppresses printing of linked file names)
 -x <regex> exclude files whose full path matches regex 

 -l symlink in current directory if file linked from Illustrator file exists somewhere else
 -f force symlink to overwrite existing target file
 -t test run
 -p <file> write commands to a script file

 -u status of src and target
  - doesn't exist
  F plain file
  L symbolic link
  E exists (unknown file type)

 Note that src is the link contained in the Illustrator file and
 target is a file of the same name in the same directory as the Illustrator file

 If the status is -- you will have problems in Illustrator
 If the status is -F Illustrator will substitute the local file for the unavailable linked file
 If the status is F- you can run this script with the -s option to make a symlink 
 If the status is FF then Illustrator will be happy 

EOF
 exit();  
}

sub mysymlink{
 my ($src,$targetdir)=@_;
 my $target=File::Spec->catdir($targetdir,basename($src)); 

 if(File::Spec->rel2abs($src) eq File::Spec->rel2abs($target)){
  print "src and target identical for src=$src\n" if $opt{v};  
  return;  
 }

 if(-e $src){
  my $opts=$opt{f}?"-fsv":"-sv";  
  my $cmd="ln $opts \"$src\" \"$target\"";   
  myexec("$cmd");
 } else {
  print "No link made: $src doesn't exist\n" if $opt{v};
 }
}
sub myexec {
 my ($cmd) = @_; 
 if ($opt{t}){
  print STDERR "test: $cmd\n";
 }  elsif ($opt{p}){
  print SCRIPT $cmd,"\n";
 }  else {
  # should get to see output with system
  print STDERR "run: $cmd\n" if $opt{v}; 
  return system $cmd;  
 }
}

sub mystatus{
 my ($src,$targetdir)=@_;
 my $target=File::Spec->catdir($targetdir,basename($src)); 

 my ($ss,$ts)=("-","-"); 

 $ss = "E" if(-e $src);
 $ss = "F" if(-f $src); 
 $ss = "L" if(-l $src);
 $ts = "E" if(-e $target);
 $ts = "F" if(-f $target); 
 $ts = "L" if(-l $target);
 return ($ss.$ts);
}

# This extracts the file info from the header
sub handleFind{
 # get the file name
 my $FullFoundFile = $File::Find::name;
 #print $FullFoundFile,"\n";

 return if ($opt{x} and $FullFoundFile =~ /$opt{x}/i); 

 # parse if it ends in ai
 findLinkedFiles($FullFoundFile, $File::Find::dir) if ($FullFoundFile =~ /\.ai$/i);
}


# This does the actual parsing of the Illustrator Files
sub findLinkedFiles{
 my ($InFile,$InDir)=@_; 

 # protect with escaped quotes for shell if non-empty
 my $ProtectedInDir=$InDir?"\"$InDir\"":$InDir; 

 die "Can't open $InFile \: $!\n"  unless open(AIFILE, "<$InFile");
 binmode(AIFILE);

 # %%DocumentFiles is the starting point 
 $/="%%"; 
 my @lines = readline<AIFILE>; 

 if(@lines==0){
  print STDERR "can't read header of $InFile\n" if $opt{v} ; # the header length
  return;   
 }

 print "################\n"; 

 if ($opt{s}){
  print "# FILE = ",basename($InFile),"\n";  
 } else {
  print "# FILE = ",$InFile,"\n"; 
 }
 for my $i ( 0 .. $#lines ){  
#  if ( $lines[$i]=~/^DocumentFiles\:(.*?)\W+%%/){
# not sure why we need two % signs here
  if ( $lines[$i]=~/^DocumentFiles\:(.*?)\W+%/){
   print mystatus($1,$InDir)," " if $opt{u} and not $opt{n};
   print "\"$1\" ",$opt{d}?$ProtectedInDir:"","\n" unless $opt{n};
   $i++;
   mysymlink($1,$InDir) if $opt{l};
   while($lines[$i]=~/^[+](.*?)\W\%.*$/){
#    print "\"$1\" $InDir\n"; $i++;   
    print mystatus($1,$InDir)," " if $opt{u} and not $opt{n};
    print "\"$1\" ",$opt{d}?$ProtectedInDir:"","\n"unless $opt{n};
    $i++;
    mysymlink($1,$InDir) if $opt{l};     
   }

  }
 } 
}